The court overturned a Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s ruling that students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are eligible for in-state tuition, despite an Arizona law seeking to force them to pay out-of-state rates.

The appellate judges ruled that DACA doesn’t give the students lawful immigration status and thus state law applies.

Why limit Arizona's economic potential?

Assuming the ruling stands, DACA students would have to pay a whole lot more than the current in-state tuition of $10,650, though it appears they won't have to pay out-of-state rates.

The Arizona Board of Regents in 2015 came up with a legal way to lower the tab for these students while respecting the will of voters. Regent Jay Heiler proposed the idea before a Superior Court judge ruled that DACA students qualified for in-state tuition, and the Regents promptly approved it.

How the Regents' plan works

Under the Regents' plan, undocumented students will pay what's called the Non-Resident Tuition Rate for Arizona High School Graduates -- 150 percent of in-state tuition. Instead of paying more than $26,000 a year in out-of-state tuition, they would pay closer to $16,000 – the actual average cost of an undergraduate education.

It's the same rate offered to students from other western states who come to Arizona's universities via the Western Undergraduate Exchange program.

Heiler, a lawyer and former Republican political operative who now runs a chain of charter schools, told me at the time that such a plan should pass legal muster and makes sense in a state where the average high school sees only 18.6 percent of its graduates earn a college degree within six years.

"Here we are setting up barriers for a group of kids who by definition are trying to go to college and qualified for admission," he said. "It doesn't make any sense for the state."

2 things this law was about (it wasn't sense)

No, it doesn't make sense to deny them an education. But then the 2006 law seeking to stick to kids who did nothing wrong wasn't ever about making sense.

Either it was about

A. Spite,

Or B. Voters' unwillingness to subsidize the education of people who are here illegally.

If it was B, then everyone should be happy with Heiler's and the Regents' plan. Proposition 300 didn't require the Regents and community colleges to charge out-of state rates to undocumented students. It simply said that they weren't entitled to any sort of subsidy from the state.